Dear FRONTLINE Community,
Journalists who do investigative work that holds power to account and exposes corruption are no stranger to threats, intimidation, incarceration and even violence.
People and governments target accountability journalists in order to kill their stories and keep sources from speaking out.
These are realities that we've chronicled extensively at FRONTLINE, both in our documentaries and in probing conversations on our podcast series, The FRONTLINE Dispatch. Recent episodes have probed the dangers facing journalists who cover right-wing extremism, the stories of independent journalists in Russia who have reported on the war in Ukraine despite Vladimir Putin's crackdown, and how the global threat environment for journalists has intensified to include new and sophisticated challenges, like the powerful hacking tool, Pegasus.
Today, on World Press Freedom Day, we are releasing a new episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast about reporting on the ground in Afghanistan with the Taliban in power.
"It just feels like half the population is in hiding," Marcela Gaviria, who with Martin Smith directed our recent series America and the Taliban, tells me about documenting the return of the Taliban's harsh restrictions on women and girls. "And that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it does feel like you can sense the fear among so many women, and fear for their future and the future of their children."
